


Mended

by mmmdraco



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-23
Updated: 2012-09-23
Packaged: 2017-11-14 22:00:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/519954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mmmdraco/pseuds/mmmdraco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaidoh has an accident and wonders about his future in tennis. Inui helps nurse him back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mended

Running in time to the music, Kaidoh felt pretty good. He could tell that his lung capacity had gotten better. His muscles were absorbing the shock of running better. His times were better. And it was all thanks to Inui.

Inui had even devised this new music mix for him. He'd gathered information on Kaidoh's favorite songs and analyzed the beats per minute and overall energy of the songs and put them in an order that seemed to maximize the effectiveness of the techniques he'd already learned. The only scary part was that he wasn't certain how Inui had known about his like of Hallyu Wave music since he had kept that a closely guarded secret. But Inui was good with data. So Kaidoh didn't ask questions.

As he was running, his eye caught on a chipmunk in a tree. He was eating something and his cheeks were swollen with it. Kaidoh felt a tinge of blush dash across his cheeks as he admired the small creature. The path took him toward it, so he kept an eye on the chipmunk. Every flick of its ears or movement of it's forepaws made a part of Kaidoh's heart ache with joy. But then a small dog walking down the other side of the path jerked his leash from his owner's hand and went dashing toward the tree with the chipmunk in it. Kaidoh's eyes widened as the dog came toward him. Not wanting to step on the dog, he halted his running mid-stride and let his foot come to rest on the running path. And something snapped.

Kaidoh stepped back. Or, he tried to. The moment his foot moved, he fell to the pavement and gasped. The dog started yipping at the chipmunk and Kaidoh tried to block out the noise over the sudden quiet that somehow managed to echo in his head. He grabbed for the cell phone from his pocket and hit the button to speed dial Inui as he pulled his headphones off. He hissed out his breath slowly and the dog yipped louder. Kaidoh could tell the dog's owner was trying to speak to him, but he wanted to talk to Inui first. When he heard the click of Inui picking up, he said loudly, "Come to the part of the path where the trees meet at the top" and hung up. He hissed in another breath and tried to focus on the man waving at him. "What?"

The man, a meek-looking salaryman type, clutched his dog's leash. "I'm so sorry. Are you okay?"

Another hiss. "I don't think so."

Bowing deeply, the man said, "Let me give you my business card. It's my fault for letting my dog get away from me. I'm responsible for your medical bills."

Kaidoh accepted the card. "Ah, okay." He felt a little dizzy and the pain in his ankle seemed unbearable for a moment before softening again to something manageable. "I called a friend who was waiting for me in the park. He should be here-"

"Kaidoh!" Inui appeared in front of him, gasping slightly for air. "What's wrong?"

"My ankle, sempai."

Inui took one look at it and his expression turned grim. "We need to get you to the hospital."

The man with the dog bowed again. "Since you have someone to help you and my information, I must be going. I'm terribly sorry."

Hissing as his ankle throbbed again, Kaidoh turned to Inui. "It's just dislocated or something, right?"

Inui didn't speak for a long moment. "Without an x-ray, I can't be certain what's wrong. Go ahead and take off your shoe."

Kaidoh did just that, though he hyperventilated through the process. "Am I going to be okay?"

Pulling a towel from his bag, Inui wrapped it carefully around Kaidoh's ankle and secured it with a wrap bandage. "You should ask your doctor that." And suddenly Kaidoh was in Inui's arms in a princess hold. "Let's go."

The park wasn't far from the hospital, but Kaidoh still mentally applauded Inui for managing to carry him all the way without jostling him too much. When they approached the reception desk, Inui sat Kaidoh down in a chair and told the attendent what the problem seemed to be. A wheelchair was brought over for Kaidoh to sit in and he refused Inui's help in moving himself over, even though he regretted it the moment he tried to move. 

Only a few minutes later, they were in with a nurse who asked Kaidoh questions (several of which Inui answered before he could), touched his ankle gently after removing the wraps (which still brought a hiss to his lips), and then asked him to wait again until the x-ray room was ready for him. As they sat in the waiting room, another nurse brought a bag of ice to put on Kaidoh's ankle for the swelling. Kaidoh nodded his head in thanks and then leaned his head back. He jerked it forward again to say, "I should call my parents."

Inui shook his head. "I've already sent your mother a text message."

Kaidoh nodded and tried not to focus on the dueling sensations of pain and cold that were wending their way up his leg. He shut his eyes tightly and started to hum softly. He felt a nudge against his hand and his eyes opened to see with the distraction was. It was Inui's hand. "Eh?"

"You can squeeze it. I've heard it helps when you're in pain to give yourself a controllable sensation to focus on instead of the ones you can't control." Inui held his hand up a little further.

"Fssh..." Kaidoh wanted to slap Inui's hand away, but grasped it tightly instead as a fresh wave of pain rolled over him. It seemed a very long time until they were calling his name, and even then Inui had to tell him.

"Would you like me to come in with you or stay out here for your parents?" Inui's hand still clutched his own.

Kaidoh shook off Inui's hand, but looked at his lap. "Come with me. I'm sure they'll call you or ask about me when they get here."

Inui stood and took his position to push Kaidoh's wheelchair. "Ah."

It hurt to go through the doorway with the very slightly raised frame. It hurt to get on the table for his x-ray. It hurt when the radiologist attempted to help him in turning his ankle the right way. He wondered how long it would be before they gave him anything for the pain, if anything at all.

Inui had to step away during the actual x-ray, but Kaidoh turned so he could watch him through the window. He'd never seen Inui look so worried, and that somehow made it easier to handle. There was nothing Kaidoh could worry about that Inui wouldn't think about and solve before it even actually became a problem, right? This was nothing. A sprain. A strain. A dislocation. (Was that even possible with an ankle?) Not a break. Not a torn ligament. Not a snapped tendon. 

A moment later and the radiologist came in again to adjust the angle of his ankle. Her ministrations hurt enough that he actually yelped in pain. He bit down hard on his bottom lip to quell the urge to scream again as she apologized and was more careful with her movements. Another x-ray taken. And then she and Inui were there again and loading him back into the wheelchair.

"Is it broken?" Inui asked calmly.

She held up her hands. "I'm not really supposed to interpret the x-rays. I just take them." But then she whispered softly, "But, yes, it's broken."

And Kaidoh's heart sank.

A nurse led them to a room where he changed into a gown with Inui's help. His body was running on auto-pilot and he kept making movements that aggravated his ankle since he wasn't trying to be careful. "Kaidoh." Inui's deep voice brought him back to reality.

"Yes, Inui-sempai?"

"It may not be that bad."

Kaidoh nodded and lay back on the bed. The pillow wasn't as thick as the one he normally used and his neck ached already from the odd angle. He let the silence hang in the air. Inui held out his hand again and Kaidoh took it, but he didn't squeeze. He felt the warmth that contrasted the cold from the fresh ice pack on his ankle. He felt the writer's callus that rubbed against his skin and the larger calluses from where Inui hands had grown accustomed to holding his racket. They seemed to line up perfectly with his own and that was a comforting thought.

It seemed a lifetime until the doctor came in. He introduced himself, but Kaidoh didn't catch the name. Inui seemed to know him, though, from the way he dropped his hold on Kaidoh's hand to shake the hand of the doctor. They were speaking to one another, but Kaidoh couldn't concentrate on the words. Finally the doctor put a hand on the bed and Kaidoh pushed himself to focus. "Yes?"

"I've looked over your x-rays. It's a pretty bad break." Kaidoh gulped. "Normally, even with this kind of break, we'd give you the option of just setting it and allowing it to heal on its own. However, the angle of your breaks is worrisome, especially now that I know you're a tennis player. You also have a few splinters of bone that have made their way into your muscle tissue and we want to remove those to make certain they won't get into your blood stream. Have your parents arrived yet?"

Inui responded that they were on their way up. Kaidoh could see that Inui's cell phone was out, so he must have missed Inui's distinctive text message tone because of his laser-like focus.

It was only a moment later that Kaidoh's mother came through the door with her arms outstretched. She ran to Kaidoh and hugged him. "Kaoru! Are you all right? Mother's here now."

Kaidoh blushed. "Where's Father?"

"He can't get out of work early. He'll be here as soon as he can, though." She ruffled her son's hair. "What happened?"

The doctor spoke up. "Hello, Kaidoh-san. I'm Dr. Takeshi. Your son had a bit of a fall when running and broke two of the three bones of his ankle. We're going to have to do surgery to set the ankle and remove a few bone splinters."

"Kaoru!" She took one of his hands in both of hers and tears formed in her eyes. "When can we expect the surgery to happen?"

Dr. Takeshi glanced at his watch. "When was the last time you ate or drank anything?"

Inui consulted his own watch. "It's been just over 5 hours since his last meal. He's consumed water since then, but only enough to replenish what he'd lost from running."

"We've got another guy coming in who needs extensive work done since he fell off the roof of a house and shattered both heels. I'm going to try to get you in before him. I trust Inui-kun to know what he's talking about." He turned to the door, but said over his shoulder before leaving, "I'll send in a nurse in a moment to start prepping you for surgery."

Kaidoh gave a sigh of relief and clutched at his mother's hand. She fussed over him quietly and he felt warmed by it, but his eyes kept straying to Inui. "Thank you," he muttered to the older boy. "You helped me out a lot."

Inui smiled that smile that only Kaidoh ever seemed to get. It was the one that wasn't devious at all, just happy. "I didn't figure I was done helping you yet. You'll still have rehabilitation to get through."

"Of course, Inui-sempai." Kaidoh closed his eyes again. He knew he wouldn't be training for a while. So, in a way, he looked forward to the rehab exercises as they would mean being closer to being healed.

A new nurse bustled into the room a few moments later. "Hello, Kaidoh-san. I've got some paperwork for you and your mother to fill out. In a few minutes, the anesthesiologist should be in to examine you." She grinned. "Sorry to say that he'll have more paperwork for you."

Kaidoh's mother took the stack of papers that was on a clipboard and began to fill them out quietly. The nurse, meanwhile, pulled a marker out of her pocket and lifted the sheet off of Kaidoh's feet. She opened the marker and drew a large black X on the front of his uninjured ankle. "Eh?" Kaidoh sat up and looked at the mark.

"It's okay, Kaidoh," Inui said, which was enough to get Kaidoh to lay back down. "They do that to eliminate the possibility of the doctor operating on the wrong part by accident." 

This eased Kaidoh's mind, but only a little. The whole experience was making his stomach churn and it wasn't helped at all by the fact that he had a schedule for his meals and he had now missed both a meal and a small snack and he was really rather hungry.

Everything began to bleed together. The nurse left and came back again with the doctor with more questions and poking and prodding. The anesthesiologist arrived with paperwork that he signed saying he knew he could die from the anesthesia. The man also made him open his mouth wide and tilt his head back. He asked a lot of the same questions the nurse had asked only minutes before. And finally it was time for the surgery. Kaidoh's bed was rolled from the room with his mother and Inui waving at him. And he didn't really remember anything after that.

When he came to again, he was laying uncomfortably in a bed in a different room. His left leg was in an incredibly awkward position, but there were so many blankets over him that he couldn't seem to move it. His whole body was pretty warm, actually, but he wasn't sure he actually wanted to move. It seemed like a horrible idea. 

"Ah, Kaidoh." That was Inui's voice. Kaidoh turned toward the sound and blinked at the tall boy. "How are you feeling?"

Kaidoh looked back down at his body. "Hot."

"Kaoru-kun! They told us the surgery went fine." Kaidoh saw his mother now with his father and brother by her side. They all chipped in with supportive words, though Hazue's were tinged with just a little sarcasm.

"Are there any doughnuts?" Kaidoh felt his mouth saying the words before he could process thinking the statement. "No. Forget that."

Inui smiled. "They've given you opiates for the pain. The likelihood of you saying something else meaningless is at roughly 95%."

"Do I get any food?"

His mother stood up. "I'll go ask one of the nurses." 

Hazue stood up and walked to his side. "What happened? Inui wouldn't tell us."

Kaidoh had to think for a moment before he could even remember. "A man's dog raced out in front of me."

"You tripped on a dog? That's ridiculous."

Kaidoh hissed. "I didn't trip on the dog. I was trying not to step on the dog. Ah, Father, Inui-sempai should have the man's telephone number. He offered to pay for the expenses."

His father nodded solemnly. "We'll work all of that out later. First we must concentrate on getting you home and relaxing under your mother's tender care."

Inui pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "Kaidoh, I've already discussed this with the doctor, but I wanted to get your opinion: would you be open to using a wheelchair rather than crutches?"

"Why?"

"While your leg is healing, the muscles will atrophy. That's a fact we'll need to deal with. However, when retraining muscles on only one side of the body, there's a 75% change of stressing the muscles on the opposite side. Since your left leg is already two millimeters shorter than your right leg, your chance of stress would rise to at least 85%. By using a wheelchair, you'll have a more even distribution of muscle mass by the end of your recovery period and the chance of stress will decrease to 35%. Additionally, using crutches can cause pinched nerves while the wheelchair will work more muscle groups as well as allow you to have more mobility while you're still accustoming yourself to your injury."

"Then that's what I'll do."

Inui smiled warmly. "I'll tell the doctor when he comes in."

Kaidoh smiled up at Inui. "I like that smile." He stretched his arms over his head, momentarily noting the discomfort of the IV line in his arm. "I'm going to sleep."

When Kaidoh woke up again, he was disoriented further because it was nighttime. His father was still in the room, and Inui, but his mother and Hazue were somewhere else. He felt woozy and still tired and struggled to sit up. He pulled the blankets carefully off of his left leg and stared at the bandage wrapped around his leg. Kaidoh looked up at his father expectantly. "Isn't this supposed to be a cast?"

But his father shook his head. "Since they had to operate, they have to let the wounds heal first before they can put the cast on. Since everything is essentially screwed into place, they don't have to worry as much about movement."

Swallowing, Kaidoh nodded his head. He felt kind of nauseous and he was beginning to notice the pain. "Kaidoh?" Inui was standing at his side now. "Should I get a nurse?"

Kaidoh looked up at Inui and shook his head. "I don't know. I feel sick to my stomach and my leg hurts."

"You haven't had any food in a while, but they brought in a tray for you. Mostly just rice and vegetables, but there's custard _and_ a cookie and you can have them both." Inui pushed the tray up to Kaidoh who began to eat very slowly and carefully.

Kaidoh's mother came in a moment later followed by Hazue who was visably upset. "But, Mother!"

"That's enough, Hazue-kun."

"What's wrong?" Kaidoh asked as he put a spoonful of custard up to his mouth. 

"Mother was supposed to come along on my overnight field trip in a few weeks, but she can't anymore because you weren't looking where you were going!" Hazue ran from the room and Kaidoh's mother frowned and ran after him as she gave an apologetic shrug.

Kaidoh swallowed his custard with difficulty. "Inui-sempai, how could I do that to him? Hazue-kun has a difficult enough time on field trips when Mother does go with him. If she doesn't go, he'll be miserable."

Inui pushed his glasses up on his nose. "How much do you trust me, Kaidoh?"

Clutching at his tray table, Kaidoh bit his lip. "Well, a lot, I guess. Why?"

"Don't worry about it. I'll go talk to them and also tell a nurse you're ready for your pain medicine, okay?"

Kaidoh nodded and went back to his custard for a moment until he heard his father clear his throat. "Is something wrong, Father?"

"The problem is that I will also be out of town for a business trip while your mother was to have been with Hazue. So soon after being injured, you won't be able to take care of yourself yet." He nodded. "I am as much to blame as anyone."

"Inui-sempai said he would talk to them. He always fixes things. At least, for _me_ he does."

"He is a good friend to you, then?"

Kaidoh swirled his spoon through the custard. "Maybe the best?"

Time passed slowly as Kaidoh finished his food and then a nurse came in with his medication. He took it with a small cup of water and she took his tray with her. He was just bored enough to reach for his television remote when Inui, Hazue and his mother came back in the room. "It's all settled," she said with a smile as she held on to Hazue's shoulders with a smile. "While we're away, Sadaharu-san will stay at our place to assist you. He's already cleared it with his parents."

"Really?"

Inui smiled. "Yes. I'm certain I possess the skill set to take care of you."

"No Inui Juice," Kaidoh said suddenly. "Unless it's the orange pineapple juice because that was really good."

Whipping out a small notebook, Inui scribbled down a few words and then pushed his finger up his nose to settle his glasses into place. "I've already talked with the doctor. You'll be staying here tonight and then you can probably go home in the morning. You'll have an appointment in about two weeks to get your full cast put on. That's about when I'll be staying with you, so I'll go with you to that appointment."

"Thank you, Inui-sempai. And, all of you. Please be patient with me for a while." Kaidoh yawned. "I'm sorry. I've never been this sleepy before."

Inui smiled at him again. "It's the medicine. Just sleep. It will help you heal faster."

So Kaidoh did.

When he woke up and no longer felt tired, it was morning. He could vaguely recall having been woken up a few times during the night to take more medicine and have his temperature taken, but all other events were a blur. He looked around the room and was surprised to see Inui sleeping in a chair.

A nurse came bustling in with a chart and looked him over and asked him questions and checked his vitals, and Kaidoh tried to motion to her to be quiet so as not to wake Inui, but it didn't quite work. He straightened up in the chair just as the nurse was urging him to use his bedpan. Kaidoh did, but blushed the whole while. The nurse left, promising that breakfast would be coming soon, and Kaidoh looked to Inui.

Inui took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes and then looked over at Kaidoh who was struck, as he always was, by just what those glasses hid. But Inui slid them back on and Kaidoh could concentrate again. "I talked to the team last night," Inui said.

"Oh?"

"They were wondering when they could come visit. I arranged it with your parents for them to stop by at your house tonight." Inui walked over to Kaidoh's bedside. "I hope you don't mind that I encouraged your family to go home for the night. They should be back shortly."

Kaidoh shook his head softly. "No. I'm glad they felt you could be trusted to look after me."

"As am I."

A nurse came in with his breakfast tray and Kaidoh began to eat, careful not to spill the hot tea down the front of his hospital gown, and ever cognizant of Inui's gaze. "How long will you be staying at our house?" Kaidoh asked as he nibbled on a piece of dry toast.

Inui's eyes gleamed as he grinned. "Probably a month."

"What?"

"Your mother talked to mine and arranged for me to stay with you to help you with whatever you need for a while so that she doesn't feel pulled between you and her other work."

Kaidoh nodded. "Of course, Inui-sempai."

"Once your parents get here, I'll leave and go home to pack. I'll be at your house tonight with the rest of the team."

"Great." Kaidoh looked up to see a nurse arriving with medicine and he took it and smiled up at Inui. "It should be fun, right?"

"Yes, Kaidoh."

Kaidoh spent a lot of the morning quietly obsessing about what Inui would think of his home life and the weights in his room and the way he organized his underwear and his mother's cooking. He was noticably distracted even as his family arrived and Inui left, and as the doctor gave him a final check-up, and as he was being wheeled out to the family car with his mother holding on to his stack of prescriptions.

The rest of the day passed by in a bit of a haze. His leg, wrapped in bandages, hurt even with the pain medication, and he was supposed to keep it elevated which felt strange in its own way. His exposed toes were quite cold, but the rest of his leg was itchy and sweaty. He wanted nothing more than to stick something down inside the bandages to scratch with because surely it wouldn't do anything to his stitches when it was his calf that itched like crazy, but he maintained his willpower and focused on other things like watching an entertainment show with his mother and a late-afternoon mecha anime with Hazue while drifting in and out of sleep.

When evening finally came, the team finally showed up. Kaidoh tried to be pleasant company, but mostly sulked on the couch as he was teased by Momo and fretted over by Oishi, even when Inui came in with his two suitcases and backpack and when his mother came in with his favorite cake. Because even with a party going on and Inui there to help him do whatever, Kaidoh was painfully aware (emphasis on the pain) that he might never be able to play tennis on the level that he had been.

And then he tried his other pain medication. The first had been Percocet. It was perfectly capable of dulling the pain to a much more manageable level. But the second one was called Dilaudid and Inui informed him that it was an opiate and therefore not too different than morphine. At first, it didn't seem to do anything. The pain was still there, he was still contemplative and still, but then he realized that he was laughing, well, quite a lot. But everything was funny! And while he felt the pain in his leg, he just couldn't bring himself to care. 

He waved heartily at his friends as they left, even Momo, and then turned to Inui. "Are you going to carry me up to my room?" Something seemed wrong about the statement, even to Kaidoh, but he shrugged it off.

Inui looked at him steadily for a moment. "Let me consult with your mother." And then he was off and Kaidoh was alone on the couch. He noticed that all of the colors of everything seemed brighter than they had earlier in the night and gasped as he realized that, well, he was _high_.

A moment later, Inui was back in the room. "I'm going to take my things upstairs first. It seems your mother already laid out a futon for me in your room. Then I'll be down to get you so you can take a bath." He slid his backpack on his shoulder and grabbed his suitcases and walked up the stairs. Kaidoh found himself looking at Inui's butt, but couldn't muster up the energy to look away.

His bath was interesting. With Inui's help, his bandages were wrapped in a bag and plastic wrap he got naked and sat on the floor of the bathroom with his foot propped up on an extra bathing stool. Inui stayed with him and scrubbed his back and washed his hair and rinsed him off. He spent several minutes trying to figure out a way to let Kaidoh soak in the tub, but decided it would have been too awkward of an angle since it would require Kaidoh's head to be where the faucet was, so he just rinsed Kaidoh off more and dried him off most of the way and wrapped him in a bath sheet and carried him back to his room.

It was as Inui was helping Kaidoh put on a pair of underpants that Kaidoh realized just how much of his body Inui had seen. And it made him blush and hiss and fall back on the bed when Inui touched his hips to try to help him up to pull the underwear on the rest of the way. Kaidoh tried to help then, but his hands weren't quite obeying him and grasped Inui's hands instead.

Inui grabbed him bodily and hauled him upright and pulled the underwear up and set Kaidoh back down on the bed. In another moment, Kaidoh was helped into a pair of pajamas and dragged to the sink to brush his teeth and then brought back to bed when Inui was extremely careful in arranging the blankets around his leg.

And things were like that for weeks. Any need that Kaidoh had, Inui was there for. He brought him food on a tray (made by Kaidoh's mother) and kept him entertained and kept track of his medicine and his nutritional intake and his energy levels and even kept him entertained with music and a handful of shows and movies on DVD that Inui had chosen especially for Kaidoh.

When it finally came time for Hazue's trip, Kaidoh hardly noticed. It was odd not to hear anyone's voice except Inui's and his own in the otherwise empty house, but it was kind of fun, too. Each night so far had been like a sleepover, but this was an even better one, especially now that the pain wasn't as bad and he could hop to the bathroom on his own or wheel himself along outside when they went for a "walk". 

It was the day he'd get his cast finally. Inui helped him to the orthopedic surgeon's office and got him checked in and they sat in the waiting room for a while looking at magazines until it was Kaidoh's turn to go back. He started to push himself, but felt the wheelchair pause as Inui gripped the handles. "Don't you want me to come back with you?" So Kaidoh moved his hands and let Inui push him through the maze of the building.

He was helped up onto a table and the doctor came by and explained what would be happening and then cut off the bandages and examined his stitches. "This looks fine. Let's get these stitches out and then we can get your cast on."

Kaidoh, who had been looking at everything else in the room to avoid seeing his foot, finally looked at the first tiny, sharp pain as a stitch was removed. There was dried blood from a large incision on either side of his ankle (a smaller one on the inside than on the outside, but both still sizeable) and flakes of dead skin fell off of his foot and it was so many colors thanks to the bruising that Kaidoh hardly recognized it as being his own. Inui's hand came up to his own and he clutched it as tried to ignore the almost pricking sensation as the stitches were all taken out.

As the doctor began to rummage in a drawer for the materials for the cast, Kaidoh reached down with his free hand and tried to knock some of the dead skin off of his heel, but it surprised him how much that hurt still. 

A bandage almost like a sock was pulled up over his leg and then wrapped with a thick layer of gauze. The ends of the sock were pulled back over the gauze and then Kaidoh got to choose his cast color. He wanted the white, but the doctor explained he didn't have enough rolls for what Kaidoh need, so he grudgingly chose the bright green which reminded him too much of the bandanna that he habitually wore during tennis, but would be better than the black since his leg was already getting warm just from the gauze. The rolls were dipped in water and Kaidoh's leg was wrapped from the base of his toes up to his knee and his ankle was pushed this way and that during the process until the doctor seemed satisfied. "We need to wait just a bit for that to dry, but then you'll be ready to go. We'll get you back in here in a month or so for a walking cast." And that was it.

The cast was heavy. And awkward. And even itchier than the bandages. Inui took him home after filling his new pain medicine prescription and they had lunch and Kaidoh sat down on the couch with his leg up and tried to keep his sighs to a minimum.

Inui came over to him and sat down. "What's wrong, Kaidoh?"

"Sorry, Inui-sempai. Just a little worried about what will happen once I recover."

"You'll play tennis again," Inui said with a surety that Kaidoh definitely didn't feel.

"And if I can't?" Kaidoh clutched the throw pillow that supported his side.

Inui grabbed his hand again and Kaidoh clutched back without thinking because it was becoming second nature now and he'd had the Dilaudid earlier which was making even Inui seem brighter. "Kaidoh, do you know that I only kept playing tennis for you?"

"What?"

"As your partner, I am very good at what I do on the tennis court. But in singles, I will never be good enough."

"So if I don't play tennis anymore, then you'll stop, too?"

Inui ran his thumb along the back of Kaidoh's hand. "Playing in tournaments? Maybe. But there's more to life than tennis and more to tennis than competition."

Kaidoh shook his head. "But you're so good, Inui-sempai."

"And so are you, Kaidoh. But we play pairs now. And I don't think I could ever find someone whose playing complements my own so well. So I'll stick with you."

"But-"

"Shh," Inui said and moved so that he was sitting on the edge of the couch with his hip touching Kaidoh's. "Let's cross that bridge when we come to it."

And Kaidoh turned his head a few centimeters to the right and kissed Inui softly, who leaned into the kiss like he'd been waiting on it for a while and pressed Kaidoh back against the couch cushions and turned that gentle kiss into something amazing and brilliant.

When Inui finally pulled away, Kaidoh stayed down and stared at the ceiling. "Did that really just happen or is this medicine making me hallucinate?"

Kaidoh looked at Inui who pushed his glasses up his nose and Kaidoh noticed that they had fogged over just a tiny bit. "The medicine probably affected how you perceived the kiss, but it was still a kiss."

"So... " With a cough, Kaidoh tried to look at the ceiling again but now his eyes didn't want to leave Inui's face. "What does that mean?"

Inui's glasses glinted in the light. "That the next two weeks could be a lot of fun, for one."

"Are we... dating? I don't even know how this works."

Inui gripped his hand again and Kaidoh belatedly realized that they'd never let go. "Well, I won't say I wasn't attempting to woo you. But I don't think you're up to dating just yet."

"We could go for crepes," Kaidoh said suddenly. "If there's food, it's a date. Momo said that once."

Pressing a kiss against Kaidoh's forehead that was somehow brilliant in its own right, Inui laughed. "How about I warm up some of your mother's food and we'll watch the documentary on kittens again?"

Kaidoh nodded and tried to damper down the gigantic smile on his face. Breaking his ankle was still horrible, but the future seemed a little less frightening now and he didn't think it was all because of the opiates.


End file.
